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14
Oct
Knaresborough land train shunted into a siding until more funding can be found
The land train proposed for Knaresborough has hit the buffers, after a bid for £24,000 in funding was rejected by the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority.
Knaresborough and District Chamber applied for the grant from the second round of Mayor’s High Street Fund in order to pay for a 10-day trial between two weekends in spring, to test the land train’s suitability and popularity.
A consultant hired by the chamber last year found that only 20% of visitors to the town centre made their way to the riverside, and 20% of visitors to the riverside made it up to the town centre. The land train project is intended to improve connectivity between the two.
The grant money would have paid for the hire of the vehicle, some events over the two weekends of the trial, and project management of the scheme.
But the bid was not successful because, said the chamber’s Peter Lacey, it was “too risky for the Combined Authority’s funding algorithm”.
He told the Stray Ferret:
The formal feedback was that there was no certainty of the land train project being taken forward.
It is not the first time the land train has been delayed. Last September, North Yorkshire councillors approved spending £15,000 on a feasibility study for the scheme, but that funding had to be spent by the end of March.
Delays getting the trial up and running – in particular, securing the correct permit to carry passengers – meant that nearly all the money had to be handed back to the council.
Mr Lacey said:
The sticking point now is that this latest funding application included the costs for a professional risk assessment by someone who really knows highways law, which would have satisfied – or not – the highways department.
If somebody – a business or an individual – is willing to provide the necessary £2,000 for that risk assessment, we’ll do it: please get in touch. It’s a project that has been shown to be wanted and needed locally, but we just don’t have that sort of resource as a chamber.
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